Thursday, July 13, 2006

If it’s possible to do worse than fail, I’m certain that’s what I’ll end up doing on the RHCT exam tomorrow.Oh well. Ultimately it’s not that important to pass it. I don’t need it to move to the position I’m eventually hoping to move to at work, and while it would look good on a résumé, the fact of the matter is that I don’t have any interest in holding a job (like a System Administrator) that would actually require the certification.Also, the faster I fail, the sooner I’ll be home…Earlier today I was listening to a Liz Phair song, one that was a “You” song, in fact, but rather than arguing with her, I answered her musical question in a self-effacing manner that had me laughing.In the song she asks, “Why can’t I breathe whenever I think about you? Why can’t I speak whenever I talk about you?”My response? Because you’re choking on your revulsion.(Ba-dum tssh!)It made me laugh, anyway.In case you don’t recognize it, the song in question is called Why Can’t I? and it was fairly popular a while back.In fact, a lot of critics and long-time fans dismissed it as a sort of lightweight, bubblegum pop song.In fact, for a while it was popping up in the trailers for romantic comedies that would normally have exactly that kind of music playing in them.Honestly, it does sound sort of light and inconsequential and “poppy,” especially compared to her earlier music, but people who dismissed it as sweet and cute and innocent and lumped it in with music from the whole “Pop Tart” genre (Britney, Jessica, Ashlee, etc.), as well as the people who actually liked it for those reasons, obviously weren’t paying attention.I mean, for one thing, if you listen to the lyrics you’ll see that the whole “budding romance” she’s singing about is one that’s happening between two people who are in committed relationships with other people.So basically it’s a song about two people who are stepping out on their partners, which, despite some of the melodramatic and gushy sentiments expressed in the lyrics and the cheery, danceable music, makes it a lot less sweet and innocent.Also, people who only ever heard it on the radio might nor realize it, but she actually drops an F-bomb, and does so rather casually and off-handedly.(“Here we go now we’re at the beginning, we haven’t fucked yet but my head’s spinning”)Those darker elements are actually the main reason I like the song; it’s a sweet little pop song about falling in love…as sung by Liz Phair, which means that it has a bit of an edge to it.Anyway, just thought I’d point that out.I suppose I should try studying up for the exam, but I suspect that there’s nothing in the book that can prepare anyone for the actual test. In fact, I don’t think anything I learned this week can actually be used in any fashion. As we did some practice exercises today, it became clear that in order to succeed you need to have a lot of pre-existing practical experience, or else you’re expected to somehow magically extrapolate solutions despite the fact that the solutions don’t logically flow from what you’ve learned.Or rather, they don’t logically flow without the missing piece that you haven’t been provided with, a missing piece that is obviously self-evident to experienced Linux administrators, but for the rest of us, not so much.It’s sort of like, “A, therefore C.”“Okay…but how do I get to C from A?”“With B. Duh.”“Okay…but I didn’t know that there was such a thing as B.”“You were supposed to figure it out. It was obviously implied.”“Oh.”Anyway, if you want to wish me luck, feel free, but keep in mind that you’ll just be throwing your wishes away….